MacSpeech Dictate

MacSpeech Dictate was a speech recognition program developed for Mac OS X by MacSpeech. The first version of MacSpeech Dictate was released in March 2008 after being showcased at the Macworld Conference & Expo in 2008 and winning the Macworld 2008 Best Of Show award. On September 20, 2010, Nuance Communications, which acquired MacSpeech in February 2010, released a new version of the product, renaming it "Dragon Dictate for Mac".

MacSpeech Dictate ran as a Mac-native application. It used the Dragon speech recognition engine (v9 or v10), licensed from Nuance Communications. This is the same technology that powers speech recognition in Dragon NaturallySpeaking for the PC, although across platforms there are significant differences in features, functionality and integration. One major difference with MacSpeech Dictate was that it did not allow training by typing misrecognized words as Dragon NaturallySpeaking products do on Windows. Another notable difference was the lack of a transcription feature for recorded voice dictation, as found in NaturallySpeaking. MacSpeech released a separate product, MacSpeech Scribe, to handle this.

MacSpeech Dictate Medical, a version with specialized vocabularies for doctors and dentists, was released in June 2009.[1] MacSpeech Dictate Legal, with specialized vocabulary for lawyers, was released in July 2009.[2] MacSpeech Dictate International, with support for speech recognition in English, French, German and Italian, was released in September 2009.[3] Localized versions of MacSpeech Dictate are available in German, French and Italian.[4]

Contents

A review/comparison to NaturallySpeaking for Windows[edit]

Reviewing MacSpeech Dictate 1.0 in the New York Times in January 2008, David Pogue concluded:[6]

So Dictate 1.0 is attractive, simple and Mac-like. It is not, however, as good as NaturallySpeaking 9.0 for Windows ($200). It lacks features like audio playback of what you said, a simple “add word” command, legal and medical versions, and non-English language kits.

It also lacks voice correction.

When NatSpeak makes an error, you just say “Correct ‘ax a moron’ ” (or whatever it typed); and choose from a list of alternate transcriptions. The program not only corrects the error in your document, but also learns from its mistake. Over time, the accuracy edges ever closer to 100 percent.

In Dictate 1.0, however, you have to fix transcription errors by hand. The company intends to add voice correction in a 1.1 update; in the meantime, though, your accuracy won’t improve.

The late beta version I tested has some bugs. The company intends to get these fixed by the 1.0 version’s mid-February release.

Even so, Dictate gets the big things — speed and accuracy — right, which may be enough for a lot of people. This program and the new Mac Office fill big holes in the Macintosh landscape — a landscape that’s looking brighter all the time.

Later versions of the software added the features listed as lacking in David Pogue's initial review.